S&P Upgrades 8 Big Japanese Banks

TOKYO -- Standard & Poor's Ratings Services upgraded the long-term credit ratings of eight major Japanese banks, which could signal that the health of Japan's financial system is improving.

This is the first broad upgrade of Japan's banking industry in at least 20 years. An S&P analyst said there have been a few individual cases of banks being upgraded, but he couldn't find a previous example of a group of major banks being upgraded in the S&P database, which goes back to 1983.